Employee Surveys how to get actionable results in less time
June 2002
Though the questions asked and the answers given may differ, employee surveys are remarkably similar in design and structure to marketing research surveys, especially if you think of most customer satisfaction surveys. But Snap, which is very widely used for research and feedback activities within organizations, also offers a range of functions that make the task of conducting employee surveys simpler and easier.
In this "Focus on…" we examine how Snap can benefit organizations that need to know more about the experiences of their employees, be alert to the effect of new initiatives on their workforce, and above all, to do this accurately, confidentially and with the minimum of effort for everyone involved.
We feature here two very different organizations using Snap for surveys among employees. While one uses Snap for paper-based questionnaires and the other almost exclusively uses surveys deployed on the company’s intranet using the Snap web module both report improvements in efficiency through saving time, reducing effort and limiting the potential for mistakes. Better still, both point out qualitative improvements – through being able to get more value out of their surveys, either through having the time and ability to do a more thorough job, or by being able to get to actionable results much faster, while the news is still hot.
Case Study: City of Sheffield’s Education Team are quick learners with Snap staff surveys
In the nine months since Sheffield Education Department Training and Development Section invested in a copy of Snap Survey Software, their work on employee surveys has become more efficient and more thorough and by using Snap, it has enabled the team to tackle more ambitious surveys.
In the nine months since Sheffield Education Department Training and Development Section invested in a copy of Snap Survey Software, their work on employee surveys has become more efficient and more thorough and by using Snap, it has enabled the team to tackle more ambitious surveys.
The section looks after the career development of the city’s 3,500 support staff in schools and 800 support staff centrally, through a variety of courses and training programmes. One of the team’s responsibilities includes checking that training courses have been useful and well received. Another of the section’s responsibilities is monitoring initiatives such staff appraisals, team briefings and induction programmes for new starters. At present, evaluations are administered on paper, as that is the easiest way to reach the support workers in school, though web surveys are an option for the future.
Before Snap was used, questionnaires were designed on a standard word processor with data entered into a spreadsheet. It was a laborious task to get the data in correctly, with plenty of scope for mistakes. Even then, producing even simple counts and percentages was a major effort, so a lot of the potential value of the data was lost.
"With Snap it still takes some time to input the data, but once it is done, if it is just the percentages we need, the information is there straight away. If required, we can also produce charts and tables."
Gaynor Wilkinson, the section’s administrative officer and the main Snap user, commented: "It used to take a lot longer to process and analyze a survey. We often didn’t have time to look at all the results. With Snap it still takes some time to input the data, but once it is done, if it is just the percentages we need, the information is there straight away. If required, we can also produce charts and tables."
Initially, Gaynor and her colleagues decided to forgo the introductory training, teaching themselves from the manuals. She observed: "It is quite easy to learn, although I think you do benefit from the training – you make it harder for yourself it you don’t. Although we always got to the answer, we sometimes went a long way round to get it!"
Recently, an in-house training day was organized through Snap Surveys. Gaynor commented: "It was excellent: we all really enjoyed it. Our trainer came to us, and tailored it to our needs. She had a mixture of people: some had used Snap, others had never touched it – but everyone learnt a lot"
Much of the learning, notes Gaynor, is in designing ever better surveys. She gave the example of the tendency for people to design write-in questions rather than think about the range of answers for a tick-box question. She now encourages tick-boxes whenever possible, as they get a much better response from those surveyed and are easier to process too.
Gaynor also considered it was a wise investment to put the effort into creating a standard template for questionnaires, that follows the house style. At Sheffield, the result is so similar to those used before that most people are largely unaware that any new computer software is involved. She concluded: "It’s a major benefit to our section, being able to produce questionnaires ‘in-house’, rather than having to employ consultants to undertake this work for us."
How Snap helps with employee surveys
Snap software provides practical help at every stage of the way when conducting surveys among employees.
Streamlined, efficient process
Even using paper-based surveys, Sheffield Education’s training and development team feels the process of carrying out a survey is faster and more streamlined than before. On the web, the benefits are even more noticeable. One company we spoke to reported surveys that took three to four months to achieve now routinely took three to four weeks.
Encourages better response
A year ago, we reported the improvements in response rates achieved by UK government agency, the Employment Survey, after switching to web surveys in Snap to reach its employees (Focus On, May 2001).
The confidentiality of the process and the ease of completion had seen the response rate rise by between 50% and 100%. The agency, along with many other Snap web module users, report similar reductions in time to complete surveys.
Power over the analysis to drill down and focus
The benefit Gaynor Wilkinson most enjoys is the control and flexibility she has over analysing the data. Using Snap to collect and process the data means you can get your surveys to work harder for you. Key to this is the ability to work directly with your data at the analysis stage.
Up-to-the-minute reporting
Though the technicalities of doing web surveys in Snap are not great, SurveyShop can take away all the technical concerns and deploy surveys on the Internet or even company intranets, so that there need be no obstacles in the way of getting the results out really fast.
It was the role of SurveyShop we discussed in December’s Focus, at Scottish Equitable (Focus On, December 2001). At the time, Libby Taylor said: "It is the timeliness of our reporting that enables managers to decide what has to be done, so that any issues which may arise can be dealt with promptly. If, by the time the results come back, they are out of date, there is a danger that things have moved on."
The flexible solution
Whether you use paper or web, design the whole survey yourself or outsource some or all of the work to SurveyShop, using Snap will ensure you can focus on the findings, not the process, and rapidly turn up-to-the-minute data into actionable results